


Precipitation

by orange_crushed



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-15
Updated: 2011-04-15
Packaged: 2017-10-18 02:50:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/184205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orange_crushed/pseuds/orange_crushed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>pre·cip·i·ta·tion<br/>n.<br/>1. A headlong fall or rush.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Precipitation

Sherlock is filing a thumbnail.

"Oh, Christ," says John. He is standing in the doorway to the kitchen with his hands full of groceries. "Tell me that wasn't in the butter bell." Sherlock looks up and blinks, his eyes glazed with concentration and his hair sticking up wildly to one side, as if he was clubbed suddenly by a particularly aggressive thought. He looks John up and down, focusing now, catching the red lines in his fingers from the plastic supermarket bags, the melting snow pooling on the tops of his boots, the last biscuit crumbs caught in his scarf. Well, they were oatmeal, and on sale. No mystery there. Sherlock frowns.

"Butter bell?"

"The- the jar, the cup for the- the _butter bell_ ," he snaps, irritated. He gestures at the little crock beside Sherlock's elbow. Sherlock waves the thought away and goes back to the severed thumb he's holding in his blue-gloved grip. He tilts it, stares for a long second, and scrapes the underside of the nail with the edge of the rasp. John's stomach lurches. He sets the bags down and rummages around purposefully, thinking about beans on toast and soup and the wonderful, sterilizing heat all canned good are exposed to in the preservation process. He is fairly sure Sherlock has not yet found a way to poison, mutilate, or otherwise ruin tinned food. Yet. John stuffs the plastic bags under the kitchen sink and stands up to find Sherlock standing over him, weirdly close, smelling of soap and formaldehyde.

"Were you really keeping butter in there?" he asks. There's a little tug at the side of his mouth, tectonic evidence of a smile forming below the surface. John doesn't know why he watches for things like that, now. More often. He glances away at the table, at the abused little dish, to keep from looking longer. "That's very epicurean of you, John. And disturbingly quaint."

"There's only one disturbing thing in this kitchen right now," says John, "and it's still wearing a ring."

"Don't be squeamish."

"Squeamish?" John sighs and drags his coat off, throws it on a hook. "You're mistaken. I count myself lucky if it's stopped moving." He turns back and Sherlock is still standing there by the cupboards, that twitchy grin lingering. "Please tell me it's stopped moving."

"Mostly."

It's nearly time for supper, so John convinces him to move the experiment upstairs, or downstairs, or basically anywhere away from the food. Sherlock grumbles, but bags up everything and disappears for half an hour, re-appearing like an evil genie just as the timer on the microwave goes off. He opens the door and stares inside at John's instant dinner, a complaint about pedestrian culinary choices and the caloric opiates of the masses formulating on the tip of his tongue. John can see it happening, the way other people watch flocks of birds migrating early or rats running away from an earthquake. It amuses him to discover the transparencies in someone so often and so stunningly opaque.

"Shut up," says John, preemptively. "If you want bœuf à la bourguignonne, you can add a recipe to your hard drive and impress me sometime." He expects a dismissive snort in response but he doesn't get one; instead he gets one of Sherlock's rare, genuine smiles. The one that sends strange little signals up John's spine, things he doesn't really understand. It's wide and gawky and awkwardly bright, as if Sherlock's unsure of how exactly to hold joy.

"We'll see," is all he says. He gives John's dinner one last scathing look. "Although with taste like yours, it shouldn't be much of a challenge."

They argue about television programs all through the meal, which John eats and Sherlock picks bits out of to nibble on. They pass endless reality shows and a half-dozen action films and the news and end up watching a nature documentary about hyenas. Sherlock sits huddled in blankets, staring at the screen fixedly while the hyenas rip an antelope in half. "This reminds me of something," he says. "Something we've watched before." He snaps his fingers. "Ah. I remember. _X Factor_." John laughs and drops his fork and picks it up again, and when he lifts his head he looks at Sherlock for a long, long time out of the corner of his eyes, watching the blue light flicker on his features. The proud nose and the skinny cheeks and the drooping curls across his forehead; the pale, greedy eyes taking in every detail, no matter how inane, how small. He's ghostly pale in the dim light, blanket pulled up to his chin. He glances over at John, who is suddenly terribly interested in the bottom of his dish. There is an unusual silence, the moment when Sherlock ought to ask him if his awful meal's given him food poisoning already. He doesn't. "It's snowing again," he says. John looks up, surprised.

It's falling fast and thick outside, in fat flakes that cling to the edges of the windows and spin spiderwebs of cold air and colder water. There's barely any sound in the street below; the slamming door of a cab and the crunch of tires on ice, jingling keys in the distance, fading now to nothing. John watches the snow tumble down.

"So it is."

John falls asleep on the sofa with his face pressed into his elbow. For once he doesn't dream of deserts but of drifts, white mist in the sky, touching rooftops and shoulders, coating eyelashes and flickering in the wind. He dreams of cold breath and warm hands. It could be hours or minutes. He wakes up briefly when Sherlock drapes the blanket over him, but he keeps his eyes shut and pretends that he doesn't. He tries to keep his breathing steady. He knows Sherlock will notice. He suspects Sherlock knows that he knows, but that thought is a little too reflexive and suspect for the middle of the night. The blanket is a warm weight on his side, pressing him down into sleep. He's halfway there when he hears a thin, scratchy sound coming from the kitchen. He cracks an eye open and there's a faint light, a desk lamp craned above a rack of test tubes. Sherlock's back is blocking most of the glare. He must hear John stir, because he turns around, outlined in orange haze from the bulb. John can't see his expression, but he is very clearly clutching that goddamn thumb in one hand and the file in the other.

"Go back to sleep," he says, finally. "Or you'll be useless in the morning." He turns around and the filing starts again. John presses his face back into the sofa.

In another minute, he's dreaming of snow.


End file.
